VMware Profits Down 36.5% but Execs Optimistic for Rest of 2009

Virtualization software maker VMware reports profits of $33 million or 8 cents per share, compared with $52 million or 13 cents per share a year ago. Overall revenue was flat at $456 million, but VMware's CEO and CFO are optimistic that good numbers lie ahead.

Enterprise virtualization software kingpin VMware on July 22 reported
a 36.5 percent falloff in its second-quarter profit from the same period a year
ago, but CEO Paul Maritz and his fellow executives remained
optimistic about the company's prospects for the next six months.

VMware, which is owned and operated as an independent subsidiary by storage
giant EMC, reported profits of $33 million or 8 cents per
share, compared with $52 million or 13 cents per share a year ago. Overall
revenue was flat at $456 million.

It is widely estimated that VMware's hypervisor, which enables data storage to
be consolidated and carved up into workload units not bound by physical disk
capacity, is used in about 80 percent of the world's enterprise IT systems.

"We managed to return a solid quarter, despite a very large product
transition," Maritz said. "As far as our customers and ecosystem
partners are concerned, it's been very positive.

"About 1,000 ecosystem partners, from very small ISVs to very large server
vendors, have been working hard on getting their certifications for their
products [on VMware's ESX and VSphere hypervisors] and releasing new products
that use the VSphere foundation. This will all help build future bridges to the
cloud. And it speaks to the product maturity we have."

VMware Chief Financial Officer Mark Peek told analysts and journalists on a
conference call that VMware expects revenue to be slightly better at between
$465 million and $480 million in the third quarter of 2009. Wall Street
analysts' estimates are in the neighborhood of $474 million.

"Even though we remain cautious about the global economic conditions, we
are beginning to get a somewhat better visibility into our business," Peek
said.

Peek also said VMware expects revenue for its fiscal year 2009 to increase by 1
to 3 percent over its 2008 sales of $1.88 billion.

According to Peek, VMware's second-quarter services revenue increased by 32
percent from a year ago to $228 million, while license sales fell 20 percent,
also to $228 million. A couple of major U.S. military-sector service deals were keys to the
service revenue increase during the quarter.

Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz